Leaving politics behind, a veteran cosmonaut and two rookie astronauts blasted off from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan yesterday for a six-month mission aboard the International Space
Station.

The Soyuz rocket lifted off at 3:57 p.m. EDT, a live broadcast on NASA Television showed.

The Soyuz capsule held cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, a retired Russian Air Force colonel; NASA
astronaut and U.S. Navy pilot Reid Wiseman; and German astronaut and geophysicist Alexander
Gerst.

Less than six hours after liftoff, the three men reached the $100 billion research laboratory as
it flew about 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean west of Peru. The Soyuz slipped into a berthing
port at 9:44 p.m. EDT.

Tensions between the United States and Russia have been strained since Russia annexed Ukraine’s
Crimea peninsula and the U.S. imposed economic sanctions as punishment. But until recently, the
space partnership was largely exempt from the political rancor and the sanctions’ financial
impacts.

That ended earlier this month when Russian officials said they would not support a U.S. proposal
to keep the station operating beyond 2020.